The Ballad of the Hi-Tech Man

 

 

So here I go again, looking for more ways to make money. I mean, things are so expensive these days, have you seen the price of honey? Now that it looks like that hi-tech thing has bottomed out, I’ve been left high and dry with no clout, my stock portfolio is headed south, so I need to do something about this money situation – a guy who can’t support his family, as far as I’m concerned, is nothing but a lout.

 

“Just what is it that I really do,” I ask myself in confusion. After all, I have to be able to sell myself to an employer – nobody’s going to hire me unless I can offer some solutions. It’s true that there are many talents that I can offer – there are plenty of things I can do to enrich someone’s coffers. But try as I might, I just can’t crack the nut – it’s as if the business world’s decided that I’m cut, thrown out on my butt – that last interviewer looked at me like I was a nut!

 

So it really is all up to me now. My fate, it would seem, has been sealed by the Dow. Nobody’s hiring, everyone’s scared, the “new economy’s” façade has been bared, and everybody out there has something of their own to worry about – I even called up a radio talk show to complain – do you think the host cared?

 

 

And don’t think this gig pays all that much – this is a fine place to work but without a backup plan you are going to experience a heavy financial crush. It wasn’t always like this! Once, not long ago I was flush – with money and playthings, you couldn’t believe the way the cash came at me – like it was in a rush! Oh, to go back to those days when I was free of worry – but who am I kidding, the world is different now, I’d better get real and start to figure out something or I am going to be REALLY sorry.

 

 

 

 

But I soon learned that writing a poem is nothing like writing about tech. The sound has got to flow, it’s got to have a rhythm to it – I could see that learning to do this was going to be a real trek! I had to start learning to think like a poet – to get the words, concepts and ideas together into one big mass and throw it at someone who (hopefully) will get to know it and flow it into their mind and keep it and even learn to love it. It’s got to have a hook, and the only way to do that is to give the words a certain “look.” That’s what goes on in the brain of a bard, and I had to adopt that card. And if you’re not used to it, believe me, it can be very hard!

 

Where could I turn for some outside help? Why my computer, of course – if you’re a regular reader of this column you know it hasn’t failed me yet. You’d think that poetry and computers would make a natural fit – PCs are all about words, after all – that’s what the processor makes out of all those bits. And I found a great program that made me sit up and take notice – if it’s rhyming you have in mind you’ll call this your poetry first-aid kit.

 

Instant Poetry doesn’t do all the rhyming work for you – you’d think that an idea like that would be something new, but there are a number of programs like that, and believe me, the results aren’t like what any respectable poet would do. What a good poet needs is inspiration, and Instant Poetry supplies that in copious amounts – enough for poetic permutations and the changes you’ll want to make as you adjust your work to new words and verbal situations. It’s based on the idea of those magnetic refrigerator words that you put together to make a rhyme – you know the kind where you move the “to” magnet next to the “be” and stick rhyming words at the end of the line, so you’ll be inspired to produce something sensible that’s got a poetic sense of time.

 

On the right of the screen you find lists of words associated with different topics: wordlists have titles like common, haiku, kidspeak, romance, and there’s even one called suffix! The ones that really interested me were the ones called “Dylan” and “Boss” – not to lose sight of my project, but I am trying to write a hit song for the public. The Dylan list had words like “blowin” and “jingle-jangle” and “game” – the kind of words that his lyrics have planted in everyone’s brain. And the Boss list – you know, of course, that Springsteen is the Boss – has inspirational terms from his music like “Asbury Park” and “refinery,” that last one, of course, from “Born in the USA,” where a returned Vietnam vet is treated like he’s half-insane.

 

You drag words from the list onto the open space (known as a white board) and start rhyming at your own pace. If you need inspiration, you can use the Random tool, which throws all sorts of words at your face – you pick the ones you want to start your poem from, sort of like picking up a trace! The words are easily movable and you can change their order; the whole thing is very flexible, so you can mix and match ideas and thoughts and come up with something really successful! It’s easy to erase something that’s not matched – there’s even a suffix tool so you can change the amount of a noun or tense of a verb – like moving “patch” to “patched.” It can be a powerful idea generator, as you can see – and the coolest thing about Instant Poetry is that it’s absolutely free!

 

So now I’m churning out hits on my PC – I’ve got the process down pat now, thanks to Instant Poetry, it’s as easy as counting 1-2-3. “Why haven’t I heard your song on the radio yet?” - that’s the question I hear you ponder. Not to worry – I managed to do a bunch already. I just don’t want to turn into a one-hit wonder, so I’ll release my music only when the world is ready. In the meantime, though, I used Instant Poetry to help me with this story. Maybe I can get Dylan to sing this in his next concert and help me with my quest for money and glory?